I've got to hop in my sleigh and head south to see the rest of my family but before I go, here's a selection box of stuff you can read to avoid talking to yours 
Happy invoicing!
- Cloud Racers - ”The story of two rival pilots chasing a dream during the golden age of aviation.” The good old days when flying was fun, albeit extremely dangerous
- ‘Not dumb creatures.’ Livestock surprise scientists with their complex, emotional minds - There's more to animals than you might think: ”Scientists are probing the mental and emotional lives of animals we’ve lived with for thousands of years, yet, from a cognitive perspective, know almost nothing about… Over the past decade, researchers at FBN and elsewhere have shown that pigs show signs of empathy, goats rival dogs in some tests of social intelligence, and, in one of the field’s, um, splashiest recent finds, cows can be potty trained, suggesting a self-awareness behind the blank stares and cud chewing that has shocked even some experts.”
- Parrots learn to make video calls to chat with other parrots, then develop friendships, Northeastern University researchers say - Birds too: ”A new study from researchers at Northeastern University, in collaboration with scientists from MIT and the University of Glasgow, investigated what happened when a group of domesticated birds were taught to call one another on tablets and smartphones.”
- NGC 2264: Sprightly Stars Illuminate 'Christmas Tree Cluster' - Festive photos from the Chandra X-ray Observatory: ”This new image of NGC 2264, also known as the ‘Christmas Tree Cluster,’ shows the shape of a cosmic tree with the glow of stellar lights.”
- An Apollo 8 Christmas Dinner Surprise: Turkey and Gravy Make Space History - ”On Christmas Day in 1968, the three-man Apollo 8 crew of Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders found a surprise in their food locker: a specially packed Christmas dinner wrapped in foil and decorated with red and green ribbons.”
- Four King Maps - HT to WTFH for this sweary version of What3Words: ”I created a unique 4 swear word identifier for every 3m by 3m (approx) square in the UK & Ireland. I wanted to know where ****** **** arse **** was and it turns out it's in Darlington.”
- Rebuilding a Piece of the First Digital Voice Scrambler - HT to DoctorStrangelove for this bit of electronics history: ”In the years before World War II, German intelligence could decode band-scrambled U.S. radiotelephone conferences. After Pearl Harbor, an unbreakable speech scrambler was developed with top priority… Known as SIGSALY, the device pioneered many advances critical to modern digital media technologies, including spread-spectrum communications and the first use of pulse-code modulation (PCM) to transmit speech.”
- The Secret Father of Modern Computing - ”How Ed Roberts created the personal computer industry—and then walked away.” He may not have the fame of Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates, et al. but he was the man behind the MITS Altair, which gave them all their start.
- The transparent chip inside a vintage Hewlett-Packard floppy drive - Ken Shirriff finds a better use for jewels: ”While repairing an eight-inch HP floppy drive, we found that the problem was a broken interface chip. Since the chip was bad, I decapped it and took photos. This chip is very unusual: instead of a silicon substrate, the chip is formed on a base of sapphire, with silicon and metal wiring on top. As a result, the chip is transparent.”
- Hamonshu: A Japanese Book of Wave and Ripple Designs (1903) - ”The three volumes above bring together a wonderful selection of wave and ripple designs produced by the Japanese artist Mori Yuzan, about whom not a lot is known, apart from that he hailed from Kyoto, worked in the Nihonga style, and died in 1917. The works would have acted as a kind of go-to guide for Japanese craftsmen looking to adorn their wares with wave and ripple patterns.”
Happy invoicing!
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